Dipper awoke from his nightmare. The last thing that happened in it was that he was smoking weed with his sister and it all was hazy from there. He didn't need to worry though, the sun was shining, class was cancelled and his wife was back from her trip.
"Good morning, honey!" Dipper said with reassurance. "You won't believe the crazy dream I had."
Cindy arose from her slumber. She almost jolted out of bed, but in a very slow and unsettling fashion. Slowly but surely, she began to reach for her adventure-weathered face and peel it off. Dipper was immobilized by shock. As Cindy peeled off her face, Dipper had brief, yet apocalyptic visions. He saw San Francisco crawling with mutants and relishing its squamous squalor. He saw Oregon, every square inch covered in writhing insects that had the faces of his friends. Cindy's face was now completely gone, replaced by that of Wendy's.
"I think I would." She said in a voice that sounded like the Trumpet of Gabriel. The floor started to disintegrate into the pure void of space, and Dipper felt his body leaving the fickle void of earth. He was floating naked through a black nothingness. Dipper perceived himself as much younger than he actually was, almost as if he was his 12-year-old self venturing through the untamed wilderness of Central Oregon. Ah, the salad days.
Dipper felt his hands slowly leave his body and split off into several thousand copies of Mabel.
"Hey Dipper," They asked in a mocking fashion, "WANNA SMOKE SOME WEED?"
Dipper could see, feel and taste colors he hadn't imagined ever existed. These colors seemed like they described a sort of elder civilization, one that Dipper had fantasized about in one of his mentally mastubatory theses, yet they were very real, almost too real.
Far too real for anyone's good.
Dipper inhaled the scent of long dead city-states as he danced in ecstatic trance through the void of nothing, this was certainly the life, whatever it was.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper glanced a vision of a glacier. Back to dancing. Dipper glanced a vision of his sister, in deep meditation. Back to dancing. Mabel noticed Dipper rolling on a sheet of ice in painful spasms. Back to dancing. She grabbed his hand. Back to danzinfsohwdhduffuüuoooAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.
Dipper awoke on a sheet of ice in the Arctic circle, flanked by the Aurora Borealis and his sister. It was all too real.
"Mabel, what the hell was in that marijuana?"
"Oh you know, the tears of Vishnu, nothing that bad."
"Nothing that bad? Nothing that bad?!" Dipper was furious. "Mabel, I was floating naked through the nothingness of space, in Bill's name, what the heck?"
"Well look on the bright side, we're in the Arctic Circle! There are probably some anomalous thingiemabobbers here, what say you we go check them out?"
"I guess?" Dipper guessed as his sister pulled him up from the icy floor. "Sure is cold here, that's for sure."
"I'll say. India sure isn't like this, that's for sure."
"Just a question, though. I remember Cindy was once researching the Sadhus, and apparently Vishnu worshippers don't smoke marijuana, and Hindus, mainly Shiva worshippers, that do partake in the weed don't do so through blunts. What makes you different?"
"Oh, I'm part of a super duper secretive sect of sadhvis that allow women, smoke marijuana through blunts and worships Vishnu. We're pretty cool, I guess."
"Ah, that explains everything. For a minute, I was worried you were a phony, but you seem like you know your stuff. "
"Yeah, I'll say. If you look at different Hindu sects, you'll find at least one group that does something different than everyone else. It's totally not an oversight or anything, that would be ridiculous."
Dipper and Mabel continued on their path towards weirdness. Dipper clasped his axe in both hands, while Mabel held her staff in one hand and was munching on some lentils she brought with her with the other. There was a certain chemistry between them, not quite awkward and not quite adroit. Dipper was still pretty damn shocked by what happened to him, it's not everyday you float around naked as your twelve-year-old self.
"Say, Mabel," Dipper asked, clasping his axe, "How do we know where we're goin-oh wait there's a giant astral field of woe."
"I suppose we went the right way." Mabel said, ready to seal up the portal with her Vaishnava magick.
The field of woe looked remarkably similar to the Aurora Borealis, except it had a certain emanatory nature about it that was difficult to wrap your finger or exorcistic chants around. As Dipper and mabel stared at the field, it seemed, to briefly flash cosmic portents. Beings with chains for hands, amorphous blobs, nightmarish squats inhabited by dream demons and other various interdimensional gangsters, as well as unsettlingly geometric colors.
"In the name of Vishnu and his nine Avatars, I command thee to be sealed!" Mabel shouted.
In reaction, the field of astral woe seemed to turn a furious color. It vibrated and writhed at the sheer agony of itself and everything around it, flashing apocalyptic sighs at a rapid pace. It then began to recede into itself, slowly moaning a chant to some long dead god worshipped by nightmarish beings from before the time of Cipher. It was gone.
"Well, that was surprisingly easy." Dipper said with what little confidence he had left. "I guess I'll really need to see my therapist now."
"Don't speak too soon. It always does this."
Indeed, the field of astral woe wasn't quite gone yet. A disheartening sigh was heard from the various glaciers surrounding Dipper and Mabel. With a most foul cracking sound, the ice shattered and a battalion of seven-armed yetis emerged from the depths. They metered closer and closer to the duo.
"Well, I suppose my axe can come in handy now." Dipper said, glad Wendy was good for at least something.
Dipper raised his antique axe and proceeded to hew the arms off of the yetis without much resistance. They bled a greenish ichor that smelled of the concept of hate. Meanwhile, Mabel was wielding her mighty staff against some other yetis, vaulting over them, delivering whacks on their heads, and stabbing them in the Yeti groin, all while muttering praises to Vishnu. This went on for a good solid minute.
"Well that was invigorating." Dipper said with a half smile on his face, his beard almost frozen because of the sheer cold.
"I'll say." Mabel retorted. "I'll also incant to seal them off, which is what I did."
"It almost seemed too easy, you know? Like I haven't wielded an axe since the days I spent with the lumberjacks, collecting their folklore and their firewood."
"When you're as awesome as we are, anything's easy. Well I suppose we could smoke some more weed, to seal off the other portals. You'll get used to it, I know you will. What say you, Dipper? Next stop, Scandinavia!"
"I'm game." Dipper was suspect, he never thought teaching class was that easy.
So the two engaged in weedination to enter into the realms of Southern Sweden.
Something was amiss.
